i’d imagine that bubble-tv will cheer today’s durable goods number but as you can see from the chart (using the yearly smoothing as the month-to-month numbers are beyond volatile), durable goods orders clearly remain in a downtrend. for those preferring to view the glass half full by focusing on the shorter-term view, keep in mind as well how simple mathematics work: the “big” 9.9% gain for september follows a 13.1% plunge in august. when the “base” number of orders drops by 13.1%, they must then increase by 15.2% just to get back to where they were. therefore, the big sept gain only retraced about 2/3rds of last month’s drop. also keep in mind the trend of revisions on these numbers, which has also been one of revising the monthly numbers even lower once all the data is accounted for an adjusted.
